Katy Börner

Katy Börner (born 1967 in Leipzig, Germany) is an engineer, scholar, author, educator, and speaker specializing in data analysis and visualization, particularly in the areas of science and technology (S&T) studies. Based out of Indiana University, Bloomington, Börner is the Victor H. Yngve Professor of Information Science at the Department of Information and Library Science in the School of Informatics and Computing, an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Statistics in the College of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Core Cognitive Science Faculty. Since 2012, she has also held the position of Visiting Professor at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam.^[1]

In addition to her faculty appointments, Börner serves as a Research Affiliate of the Biocomplexity Institute, a Fellow of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology, and a Member of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory. In 2012, Börner was named an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow.^[2] In 2015, she was appointed to a two-year term as member of the U.S. Department of Commerce's Data Advisory Council.^[3]

Börner is the Founding Director of the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, an organization dedicated to the study, development, and promotion of tools and services for the analysis and visualization of large-scale networks, particularly in the areas of biomedical, social, and behavioral science, physics, and technology.^[4] She is also the curator of the international Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit, a collection of science maps and macroscope tools that seeks to educate the general public about science mapping and empower individuals to create their own data visualizations.^[5]

Education and Early Career

Börner holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Technology in Leipzig and earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Kaiserslautern in 1997. After one year as a Postdoc at the University of Bielefeld, Börner joined the Faculty of Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington in 1998 and later took up primary residence on the Faculty of Information and Library Science. In 2009, she was named Victor H. Yngve Professor in the School of Library and Information Science (now the School of Informatics and Computing).^[6]

Atlas Series

Börner is widely known for her Atlas books. The first, Atlas of Science: Visualizing What We Know (2010) explains the purposes and practices of science mapping, providing readers with many illustrations of the power of maps to navigate, manage, and utilize knowledge spaces The Atlas of Science won the 2011 Best Information Science Book award from the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) and reviews in major magazines with one reviewer writing that "Börner's magnificent book offers provocative new maps of science that will inspire fresh thinking."^[7] The second book in the series, Atlas of Knowledge: Anyone Can Map (2015), introduces a theoretical visualization framework meant to guide readers through user and task analysis; data preparation, analysis, and visualization; visualization deployment; and the interpretation of science maps. Like its predecessor, the second Atlas was greeted enthusiastically, with one review claiming, "[w]hether you read it cover to cover or just browse the extraordinary examples, you put it down inspired."^[8] And like the previous book, the Atlas of Knowledge is abundantly illustrated, using many images from the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit. A third and final book in the series, Atlas of Forecasts: Predicting and Broadcasting Science, Technology, and Innovation will be published in 2017.

Additional Publications

In addition to the Atlas series, Börner has written more than 180 articles for academic journals and scholarly texts and has edited several publications. Her major books include:

• K. Börner and D. Polley. (2014). Visual Insights: A Practical Guide to Making Sense of Data. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262526197.
• K. Börner, Y. Ding, M. Conlon, and J. Corson-Rikert, eds. (2012). VIVO: A Semantic Approach to Scholarly Networking and Discovery. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. ISBN 978-1608459933.
• A. Scharnhorst, K. Börner, and P. van den Besselaar, eds. (2011). Models of Science Dynamics: Encounters Between Complexity Theory and Information Sciences. Springer. ISBN 978-3642230677.
• Contributor to the Panel on Modernizing the Infrastructure of the National Foundation Federal Funds Survey; National Research Council of the National Academies. (2009). Data on Federal Research and Development Investment: A Pathway to Modernization. The National Academies Press. ISBN 978-0-309-14523-7.
• K. Börner and C. Chen. (2003). Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries. Springer. ISBN 978-3540002475.

References

1. "Katy Börner Faculty Page on School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University Website". Retrieved 2015-09-09.
2. "Katy Börner Selected to be an AAAS Fellow". SOIC News. Retrieved 2015-09-09.
3. "Börner Appointed to U.S. Department of Commerce--Data Advisory Council". SOIC News. Retrieved 2015-09-09.
4. "Our Mission". CNS Website. Retrieved 2015-09-09.
5. "What is a Science Map". Places & Spaces: Mapping Science Website. Retrieved 2015-09-22.
6. "Katy Börner Homepage". Retrieved 2015-09-22.
7. Shneiderman, Ben. (2010). "Communication: Mapping Science". Nature. 468 (7327): 1037–1037. doi:10.1038/4681037a. ISSN 0028-0836.
8. Kjærgaard, Rikke Schmidt. (2015). "Data Visualization: Mapping the Topical Space". Nature. 520 (7547): 292–293. doi:10.1038/520292a. ISSN 0028-0836.